I agree w/ Kobe about the poor scouting of all the teams. Although I can see how JLin went undrafted, mainly because he played for Harvard, and stats at an Ivy League school may not be comparable to assess. But Golden State had a whole year to evaluate JLin. One of their biggest need is to have a guy who can get to the line. They're about last in that category. JLin definitely showed that ability last year with the Warriors and in the D-league. Lacob said there were reports of JLin working really hard in the summer. Yet, the Warriors decided to cut him when the lock-out ended before evaluating his progress. I think someone in the Warriors front office should be fired.
There were many circumstances that the Warriors were stuck in at the beginning of the year, it's actually understandable that they waived Lin given the information they had. I really don't blame the Lacob and his GMs. There is one person who was most responsible for the non-discovery of Lin, and he was fired already.
In a foolish effort to save his own job, Keith Smart decided to give all the backup minutes to Acie Law, even after the team was out of playoff contention, because he thought it would cost the teams wins if he played an inexperienced rookie. Ironically, had Keith Smart played Lin, that might have saved his job.
I don't blame the Warriors GMs, because after all, they were the ones who brought him onto the team. It was the coach who saw him everyday in practice who couldn't recognize his potential.
Interesting article, maybe a bit of a 20-20 hindsight comments by Smart: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/25/sports/basketball/the-evolution-of-jeremy-lin-as-a-point-guard.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=general
The problem is that using eyes to judge players is so flawed, the NBA is light years behind in terms of Moneyball techniques. You have Jeremy Lin's HS coach even saying he was happy and not upset that Jeremy had 300+ schools passing on him for a scholarship, despite Jeremy taking his HS coach to a 63-2 HS record his last two seasons and winning the championship over Mater Dei, which had 7 players who got D-I scholarships all 6'7 or taller, while Jeremy's team had no one over 6'4. His own HS coach didn't see it.
Then in college Jeremy Lin completely destroyed eventual NBA 1st round picks at UConn, Georgetown, and BC, but he got ignored again. He only got 1 summer league offer from the Mavericks. Only after destroying John Wall did Jeremy get a few non-guaranteed contract offers.
The Warriors were morons, they saw Lin in practice all year and Keith Smart proves he's probably the worst coach in the league by playing Acie Law 15+ minutes every game. Keith Smart is now playing revisionist history saying Lin got dramatically better, but that's BS. Lin did work hard and improve some aspects like his jump shot, but you can see in film and highlights that Jeremy Lin had all the same skills, vision, and production when he actually played.
Finally, the worst is the Knicks themselves were about to cut Jeremy Lin. They saw him kill in practice all the time, they saw him put up the triple double in D-League, but even they were going to cut him for some no-name D-leaguer they wanted to sign instead.
The entire system has catastrophic flaws, and right now the next great Asian American bballer after Jeremy Lin still faces the same prejudice and discrimination within the system from college offers to pro looks.
Kobe's right but its crazy that noone in the maintstream will ever seriously address the fundamental problem, even if it staring everyone in the face. I want one interview with Van Gundy or Hubie Brown to ask them exactly what they mean by a statements like "he's deceptively athletic" or "he's deceptively quick."
Because the truth is, what that means is that even if you showed them an athletic Asian guy jumping around right in front of their face, their own bias would never be able to admit the existence of that basic reality. Its probably one of the most successful cases of mass brainwashing in human history. And its all related to the R word.
Well, that's why Jeff Van Gundy (killed his own coaching career by feuding with Vassilis Spanoulis who I thought could have been a poor man's John Starks) and Hubie Brown (tried to play Patrick Ewing at power forward and screamed his way out of coaching) are NOT NBA personnel people anymore.
When Vassilis Spanoulis quit the Rockets due to Van Gundy's disrespect, owner Les Alexander sent the entire Rockets team after Spanoulis (spearheaded by Yao) to get him back. It failed because the damage had been done. Les Alexander kicked out Van Gundy and graciously traded Spanoulis to the Spurs for Luis Scola. The Rockets are not perfect, but they try to atone for their errors. Notice how Daryl Morey has apologized publicly for missing Lin?
Hubie Brown, by his own admission, had his best coaching season in 1976 with the Kentucky Colonels (a team that would be a contender in today's NBA). After that it all went downhill. A Street and Smith's scouting report I read in the early 90s said about Brown "Hubie Brown would be a good coach if it wasn't for the fact that basketball is played by PEOPLE".
With all due respect to Jeremy, when people say "decptively quick or athletic," it isn't so much a race thing as it is a body type thing. I do agree, that non-Black players tend to be slapped with that tag for whatever reason. But people said the same thing about Andre Miller a decade ago. You can even say Deron Williams is deceptively quick. What they're trying to say is, Jeremy is quicker than he looks. Chen Jianghua, the athletic guard from the Chinese National team, is noticeably quick and athletic. Unfortunately, he doesn't understand how to play the game.
Former Bobcats forward Walter Herrman was one of the most athletically gifted forwards in the NBA when he played in 2006-2007.
On youtube, Herrmann flies up and down the court with his skywalking finger rolls and open court speed. He was just as athletic as Jeremy Lin, but Herrmann was a white Argentinian forward. Herrmann also produced mightily on the NBA court.
The NBA is filled with "athletic" players that can't play. I say that either one can play or he can't.
With all due respect to TVN (a closet hater based on his comment history), how is it a body type thing? Jeremy Lin is 6'4 or 6'5 with shoes on, 6'3 without shoes. Most starting NBA point guards are 170 to 190 pounds, Jeremy Lin is 212 pounds (200 pounds 18 months ago at the draft combine). The "experts" saying Lin's recent plays are "deceptively athletic" is interesting when Jeremy Lin is both taller and stronger than almost all starting NBA point guards.
I give TVN and the experts a benefit of a basketball doubt.
Jeremy Lin was a shooting guard in college. Compared to most NBA shooting guards, Lin had average size and comparable athleticism. That is not the case at PG where Lin is bigger and stronger than almost every guard in the NBA.
NBA scouts go to the far corners of the world to scout athletes. Yet they neglect the Ivy League which has demonstrated in recent years that it is more than capable of competing with the best D1 schools. There have always been good players at the Ivies, including Matt Maloney who was a terrific starting PG for the Rockets and Jerome Allen who was a 2nd round pick and was overrated in college.
I liken Ivy League vs D1 competion to the top Spanish League vs the NBA. There likely is NBA talent in the Ivy League aside from just Jeremy Lin.
My personal experience is that the higher you go, the easier it gets.
Even if Jeremy Lin had been waived by the Knicks, he would have been reclaimed off waivers. There are enough nonidiots in the NBA that recognize that Lin has game. Lin actually has received more NBA chances that college chances and is more highly celebrated as a pro than as an amateur.
The funny thing is, Jeremy Lin was offered a free-agent contract from the L.A. Lakers after the 2010 draft. Their offer was reportedly worth more than the offer from Golden State Warriors. Lin could possibly have played alongside Kobe Bryant, if he wanted to. Maybe they could better evaluate his talent. Instead, he chose to stay loyal to his hometown team, the Warriors who were run by an incompetent head coach.
The media seems to overplay the fact that Jeremy was overlooked by NBA scouting. But in reality, he had several offers: Sign with Dallas, where the G.M. really wanted to develop his talent, go to L.A. where he might get more media exposure. Or stay loyal to his hometown, which was his eventual choice.
He had a choice between teams that saw his potential, and the team that wanted him for marketing purposes (Golden State).
But Dallas.was going to send Lin to the D league for the entire year with no NBA calluo, according to Mavs GM Donnie Nelson.
The Lakers had Steve Blake ahead of Lin in the depth chart. Plus, Metta World Peace occasionally rotates into the backcourt for defense.
Joe Lacob had cleared Golden State's backup pg position. Lin was slated to be that guy before the season started. But then Keith Smart came in and didn't like the look of Lin. Acie Law was brought in because he's Smart's kind of player: INEFFECTIVE. Now both Smart and Law are gone. Golden State STILL needs a pg, but Mark Jackson is retired as a player.
If NY had waived Lin, he'd be back to GS or some other NBA team. He'd keep on crushing people in practice and would force coaches to give him minutes.
I firmly believe that Lin would've exploded like this on any NBA team that started him. I do not believe that NY is the only team Lin could be doing this foe.
Jeremy Lin really transformed himself during the NBA lockout:
http://www.mercurynews.com/jeremy-lin/ci_20033514
Plus, like he said, and like Tommy Amakar said, it takes more than a simple look or basic tests to appreciate what he brings to the game (Lin's references to 5 on 5 game situations).
His value to the Knicks are not his shooting and dribble penetration (they are icing on the cake), it is his court vision and organizational skills and ability to deliver the ball to the right person, at the right spot, at the right time, so that person can shoot the ball in rhythm (Steve Novak!).
In the popular fable of Jeremy Lin's life story, the villains are the NBA scouts and executives who overlooked the Harvard-educated, Asian-American point guard from Palo Alto.
Such a storyline, while convenient, undercuts a key aspect of Lin's rocket ride to stardom. The New York Knicks sensation is thriving not because his skeptics were wrong. Lin is thriving because he realized they were right.
He really was too willowy to survive the muscled forest of an NBA defense. He really was lacking a consistent jump shot.
So Lin rewrote his scouting report, reinventing himself shot by shot and pound by pound.
"That's the lesson here: If you don't like the way things are going for you in a sport, don't cry about it. Don't whine to the coach. Do something about it," said Doc Scheppler, who helped Lin refine his shooting fundamentals.
Over the span of more than three body-transforming months, Lin doubled the amount of weight he could squat (from 110 pounds to 231 pounds), nearly tripled the number of pull-ups he could do (from 12 to 30) and abandoned the shooting form he'd been using since eighth grade (he's now among the most accurate point guards in the NBA).
He did so by crisscrossing the Bay Area all summer, honing his shooting touch with Scheppler in Los Altos Hills, building up his lower-leg strength with trainer Phil Wagner in Menlo Park and sculpting his upper body with E.J. Costello at 24 Hour Fitness in Pleasanton -- often Advertisement on the same day.
"He's got the mental makeup of a Hall of Famer," Wagner said.
The last article is good. The Jeremy Lin of last season is not the Jeremy Lin of this season. While there were flashes of his ability, in a way it was good that he struggled / didn't play as much. It got him motivated to improve (which he did). Of course, due to the lockout, the improvement couldn't be shown to the Warriors (and Rockets indirectly).
The Knicks were lucky to pick up him and he has done well. But Jeremy Lin does deserve credit for improving. We don't know how good he will be in the future but at least we know, he will definitely work at it.
Yes, Ron Artest said he felt like Lin played like a scared punk last season, Lin said he was trying to please everyone (now he said he is only focused on what his teammates and coaches think), and he seemed to get information overload trying to run an NBA offense last year (in retrospect, it looks like that was because of his innate court vision / field sense, but not having fundamental understanding of how an NBA offense runs, so he just saw lots of noise, and not organized patterns he can easily chunk like a grandmaster chess champion now). And that will only get better with practice and experience (http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/otl/news/story?id=5797316).
The brain can process only so many data points at once -- think about the challenge of memorizing a 10-digit phone number -- so the next step is instantly recognizing which data to disregard.
"Yes," says Damien Farrow, an Australian Institute of Sports scientist who is a world leader in court-vision research, "there is a lot of information that can be considered and processed in these situations. However, typically the elite guys like Rubio don't get bogged down with all that information. Through practice and experience, they know how to filter the information and attend to only the most critical."
That guy on the wing who's open for a 3 but can't shoot the 3? Dead data. Instead, Rubio dials into the opportunity that presents itself at the top of the key, if that forward can lose his man on the pick. And he has backup options, each of them rising and falling in order of priority each fraction of a second. It's all about "situational probability," a relentless calculus that establishes expectations of likely events as they unfold. Here, long-term memory, the ability to recall successful patterns, is critical.
So, too, is the ability to "chunk" the most relevant information into manageable units. It's a way of bundling data so that it can be processed efficiently. "In terms of chess and basketball, the exact same things likely happen," Vint says. "Chess masters 'chunk' entire patterns of pieces on the board rather than recall them as individual units." In basketball, these patterns merely play out, and are recognized, at hyper-drive speed.
- he is 6 ft. 3 without sneakers and lots of NBA players use their height with sneakers on
- looks like he bulked up to 212 from 200 over summer:
He compared Lin to a stretched-out rubber band — flexible, but lacking that snap-back quality. The goal was to make him “stiffer,” through a training program of heavy weights and low repetition, in conjunction with a high-protein diet. With the added muscle, Lin pushed his weight to 212 pounds from 200, while increasing his vertical leap by 3.5 inches, Wagner said. The result is evident every time Lin barrels into the lane this season.
He always had the ability to jump, drive and shoot as demonstrated in HS and college because he could play within his weight and natural abilities. He was quick enough and good enough to play against anyone.
The NBA however is a thugs' game, which means that one would have to be built stronger or be extremely wirey to survive. I think that was what most NBA people were worried about when they thought of Jeremy, since they also believed that Asian people and players are typically slight, play "small" ball and are prone to injuries. But that never stopped Spud Webb, Mugsee Bogues, Stockton, Nash etc etc. All started as fillers in the league and developed their game with every opportunity they had even if they had to fight and claw their way through.
I think everyone could be missing the point that Jeremy was also maturing physically. It's been 2 years and you would expect the young man to develop in many ways. We all knew he was going to work hard in practice and improve his game just like anybody else. Sure he had shooting habits that was different but it had worked for him before. The only difference is that in the NBA you will get hit by defensive specialist who can hide the fouls. You will need to change the way you shoot,spot up or set up your shots. Jeremy has made some changes but he's still the same player I recognize from his Harvard and Summer League days. Smart and all the other coaches, recruiters etc are simply making up all kinds of excuses on why they overlooked Lin.
The biggest excuse however was that Lin was not even a prospect to over 300 schools and colleges, so he was automatically not a prospect to any NBA team. That did all the damage it could do to Lin's chances of playing in the league. If it wasn't for his persistence and determination to hang on he wouldn't be here, we wouldn't have this site to talk about it. I think Lin knew that these colleges, NBA teams and so-called basketball experts wouldn't give him a chance. There is a group among these experts that don't want him to succeed at all. This probably explains the big chip on his shoulder, Lin is not fighting against players' perception, he's fighting against everyone. It's not about John Wall better contract or jealous players or whatever. It's about the faceless group of people that don't want him in the league, because they want to continue the public's perception that only black people can play basketball. The reason we see so many black athletes in this league is because they want the market for themselves, which is why they try so hard. Office politics also exist among players and management, they will give opportunities to their own people, their own friends.
Smart is a prime example. He never bought into Lacob's idea to run Lin at Golden State, even though Lin did everything to show his dedication to Golden State at the expense of the other teams who were interested. Lin also felt he had a better opportunity to grow with the young team and a new coach, he got a young team but 2 ball hogs as well and a coach who was already bought by these guys to help keep his job (it didn't work).
Lin got the opportunity of a lifetime when Dantoni gave him his start, but Dantoni only did it to save his job otherwise I doubt he would have done it if the Knicks were in a better position.
Which makes Jeremy Lin, the man and the story, even more remarkable. Unfortunately his successes will only bring more challenges. Someone is going to cut him down, even injure him if that's what it takes to end linsanity.
As for the naysayers on this site (ie. Mr Negative), I don't think you know enough basketball to understand what it takes to be an NBA player, let alone the best player in a college team. You don't know what Lin had to go through to get to where he is today, if you were in his situation would you have succeeded? Sorry but no one here would have made it or even come close. If you can't even do half the job that Lin has done how can you even offer advice to a guy that's now getting all the help he can get to understand the NBA game, a niche that all of us have never and will ever get to experience.
Whitman you're wrong. The 'experts' are inclined to say Lin wasn't good and made himself dramatically better, to save their reputations. Jeremy has said a few different times that only the Mavs offered a summer league contract after going undrafted. The system was broken for a kid who was Cal's HS player of the year but received zero HS scholarships (passed by 300+ schools). It's really lazy for experts to say Lin got way better. People said the same excuses about why Tom Brady was overlooked. Jeremy Lin did work really hard getting stronger and improving hid shot, but his vision, skill set were there in high school, college, and while being cut by 2 teams. The excuses also don't make sense when you realize even the Knicks didn't know what they had and were about to CUT Lin.
Yeah I agree, the system (or something bigger than the system) is definitely broken -- which is not exactly a revelation to any asian male who grew up in the united states. Your point about the 300+ Division 1 schools that passed on Jeremy is further brought home by a listing of some of the worst ranking division 1 teams in the country this year: Binghamton, Kennesaw St., Northern Arizona, Radford, CSU Northridge, Towson, Chicago St., Bryant, San Jose St.. I think when people mention that Division 1 makes people think of the teams we see every year in March Madness (Duke, North Carolina, Ohio State, etc...).
Think about some of the 16th seeds in the National Tournament from years past. Then find the worst team in their league. That team passed on Jeremy Lin. What a joke.
Everybody knows that American colleges routinely reject superb Asian American male applicants in favor of any other applicant. It is no different in sports or anything else that colleges are involved in.
Colleges are not free market entities whose survival depends on the whims of the free market. They are grant and alumni funded trusts that take on students only to make more money. So if a college basketball coach overlooks Jeremy Lin, his job won't suffer and so he has no incentive to change.
The NBA is a competitive free market entity in which teams are trying to kill each other. Everybody who passed on Lin, including the Knicks, is cowering in embarrassment AS THEY SHOULD BE.
At the college level, not one coach has expressed remorse for passing up on Lin. You hear racists like ex Stanford coach Trent Johnson making excuses for why a NCAA Player of thr Year candidate was rejected from his team. Instead, all those racist college coaches are smugly patting themselves on the back for being racist to Lin.
The NBA hasn't given Lin the greatest chance, but at least it gave him one. Not so at the NCAA. That is a root reason (among others) why I refuse to watch NCAA D1 basketball on TV.
You know, getting passed by all 300+ schools is an interesting point that has been noted over and over again. However, it never dawned on me until Anonymous / Sydney posted just how big a deal that was. But let's take a step back and only tackle certain schools (to be fair).
Jeremy Lin sent tapes to the Patriot and Ivy league schools. Only Brown and Harvard showed interest so boo to all the other schools. Jeremy himself said he was interested in UCLA, Stanford and Cal which all didn't work out. I personally wouldn't discount most of the other schools not on this initial list. It seems that Jeremy was looking for good academic schools with athletic programs and not just basketball powerhouses. There may have been lower tier schools that could have used Jeremy but who knows if Jeremy would have attended just because a school offered a scholarship.
But I don't gave the other Bay Area colleges a pass. Among the Bay Area schools that are Division I, how many of them are "good"? University of San Francisco (USF) and Santa Clara have been mediocre in the WCC. San Jose State is not that good in the WAC. The only team that has been pretty good is St. Mary's. If Jeremy Lin has broken out while playing in the Bay Area, imagine all the attention he would have brought to the programs (then and now that he is in the NBA).
There are other smaller colleges in CA (UC Santa Barbara, UC Irvine, etc) that probably could have used Jeremy. But there's always complaints about how CA loses it's star basketball players to other schools. They had a chance to keep one and missed badly. Now that is pretty inexcusable.
DCL, more unnecessary excuse making. Any team can offer a scholarship to a player regardless of that player's interest. 300 schools passed in Lin. Lin was HS player of the year in a powerhouse state, took his HS to a 66-3 record his last 2 seasons. Won the championship when his team had no one over 6'4 and Mater Dei had 7 players at least 6'7 who all got D1 scholarships. Lin got no scholarships. Name me just 1 other HS player of the year who got no offers.
Listen, I don't really care at this point that no schools offered him a scholarship. All of that stuff can be analyzed and written into a book where people can study it for years. We can't correct it now.
I live in the Bay Area and I'm just going to say that the Bay Area school's missed out. Hopefully the Bay Area schools (and other schools in areas with large Asian populations) will learn and not ignore the Asian basketball ballers that play in SF, Oakland, SJ, LA and other locations.
Let Jeremy Lin be a wake up call to schools to not ignore kids and see what they can do for you. Dwelling on the past does us no good. What all of us fans and Jeremy himself has done is show that Asian people can't be boxed into a stereotype.
Have you ever played a basketball game where you have preconceived ideas who can play and who can't? The players you thought can play are ball hogs who shoot 80% of the team's shots and miss more than they make, but nobody makes a big deal out of it because everybody bought into the idea that he can play therefore he's good. He passed the eye test. While another guy on the team you assume can't play but seems to score most of the time when and if he gets the ball but rarely getss enough touches. You just know he can do much better with more touches but the team just doesn't pass to him and always pass to the ball hogs. Well, this happens on the playground and reaches deep into college and to some extent the NBA. That is sad because it produces alot of ball hogs and the same type of players who don't play the game the right way solely relying on their athleticism to claim their "rights" to the NBA. It should be a privelege to be in the NBA and not a right. You have to earn it. Kudos to Jeremy for earning his and playing the game the right way in spite of the so called experts. These experts can also be lumped into the category of "ball hogs" because they bought into the same mentality, one of survival of the fittest. Whatever happened to the John Woodens of coaches? Those days are gone. I'm glad an Asian American player is the one to challenge conventional wisdom and hopely dismiss all the wrong theories of what a basketball player should be and all the prejudices that come with it.
The basketball has a way of finding itself into the hands of the guys that can play.
It is on the individual player to impose his will on the game. Jeremy Lin has always been able to do that. Not even bad coaching can stop great players like Lin.
At Portsmouth and Las Vegas, Lin played with high volume scorers who had the ball much more than he did. However, Lin's efficiency stood out. So did Lin, and that's why he made the NBA.
In Lin's short stints before the NJ game, he showed a high level of involvement and individual brilliance. Even in low minutes, Lin showed us all what he could do. His teammates know too, and that's why Lin is well accepted by any NBA team that has him.
Lin can only be overlooked by people who do not know the game.
I have to agree with you on this. If a White Player had done what Jeremy Lin had done, he would be the next "Great White Hope" or the next "Larry Bird". For Jeremy Lin, there is no comparison. But the good thing is that Jeremy Lin is showing a mix of knowledge, skills and athletic ability / talent. For too long, the NBA has become an athletic game. Guess what? Asian kids now don't have to feel they need to be a LeBron / Kobe (physical freak) to play in the NBA. They can acquire the knowledge, learn the skills to play basketball. They do need some athletic ability and talent but I am certain it is out there, it just has been overlooked.
If an undrafted black player who went to the Ivys came into the NBA and played at an MVP level in his first few starts, we'd be calling him "The Great Black Hope".
Relevant to some topics discussed above, here is a link explaining what "confirmation bias" is - selectively remembering or using information to support a pre-conceived notion:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias
As said on this forum before, from HS to college to the pros, Jeremy Lin has faced subjective, prejudiced opinions from scouts about his abilities, even those who saw him play in person or who analyzed his impressive stats and production numbers. The "experts" dismissed his great plays and over emphasized his bad plays to fit their prejudiced ideas of him as a player.
Jeremy Lin, a rare Asian American who doesn't shy away from his heritage (unlike so many others who aspire to assimilate at all costs, even downplaying discrimination):
"I think [my ethnicity] has something to do with it. I don't know how much. But I think just being Asian-American, obviously when you look at me, I'm going to have to prove myself more so again and again and again, and some people may not believe it."
"I know a lot of people say I'm deceptively athletic and deceptively quick, and I'm not sure what's 'deceptive.' But it could be the fact that I'm Asian-American. But I think that's fine. It's something that I embrace, and it gives me a chip on my shoulder."
lin at least acknowledges his asian heritage unlike other asian american sellouts who tries too hard to be "white." it's refreshing to see he doesn't hide from the fact he's asian. he has earn my respect him off the court more than ever now.
I think it's hilarious that announcers often say "deceptively quick", "deceptively athletic", "deceptively strong", but how come they never say "deceptively smart"?
Because honestly, when I look at Lin, if I didn't know he went to Harvard, he doesn't look like a smart guy. David Lee was right that Lin is the dumbest smart guy he knows. I've seen articles and references that Lin uses trigonometry during basketball games as if he were mentally computing the sine of an angle. No he doesn't! It's just instincts and experience.
Anyways, it's my personal joke now whenever I hear an announcer comment on Lin's intelligence, I add, "you mean, deceptively smart".
“I’m not sure what’s deceptive,” Lin said. “But it could be the fact I’m Asian-American. But I think that’s fine. It’s something that I embrace, and it gives me a chip on my shoulder. But I’m very proud to be Asian-American, and I love it.”
I agree w/ Kobe about the poor scouting of all the teams. Although I can see how JLin went undrafted, mainly because he played for Harvard, and stats at an Ivy League school may not be comparable to assess. But Golden State had a whole year to evaluate JLin. One of their biggest need is to have a guy who can get to the line. They're about last in that category. JLin definitely showed that ability last year with the Warriors and in the D-league. Lacob said there were reports of JLin working really hard in the summer. Yet, the Warriors decided to cut him when the lock-out ended before evaluating his progress. I think someone in the Warriors front office should be fired.
ReplyDeleteThere were many circumstances that the Warriors were stuck in at the beginning of the year, it's actually understandable that they waived Lin given the information they had. I really don't blame the Lacob and his GMs. There is one person who was most responsible for the non-discovery of Lin, and he was fired already.
ReplyDeleteIn a foolish effort to save his own job, Keith Smart decided to give all the backup minutes to Acie Law, even after the team was out of playoff contention, because he thought it would cost the teams wins if he played an inexperienced rookie. Ironically, had Keith Smart played Lin, that might have saved his job.
I don't blame the Warriors GMs, because after all, they were the ones who brought him onto the team. It was the coach who saw him everyday in practice who couldn't recognize his potential.
Interesting article, maybe a bit of a 20-20 hindsight comments by Smart:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/25/sports/basketball/the-evolution-of-jeremy-lin-as-a-point-guard.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=general
The problem is that using eyes to judge players is so flawed, the NBA is light years behind in terms of Moneyball techniques. You have Jeremy Lin's HS coach even saying he was happy and not upset that Jeremy had 300+ schools passing on him for a scholarship, despite Jeremy taking his HS coach to a 63-2 HS record his last two seasons and winning the championship over Mater Dei, which had 7 players who got D-I scholarships all 6'7 or taller, while Jeremy's team had no one over 6'4. His own HS coach didn't see it.
ReplyDeleteThen in college Jeremy Lin completely destroyed eventual NBA 1st round picks at UConn, Georgetown, and BC, but he got ignored again. He only got 1 summer league offer from the Mavericks. Only after destroying John Wall did Jeremy get a few non-guaranteed contract offers.
The Warriors were morons, they saw Lin in practice all year and Keith Smart proves he's probably the worst coach in the league by playing Acie Law 15+ minutes every game. Keith Smart is now playing revisionist history saying Lin got dramatically better, but that's BS. Lin did work hard and improve some aspects like his jump shot, but you can see in film and highlights that Jeremy Lin had all the same skills, vision, and production when he actually played.
Finally, the worst is the Knicks themselves were about to cut Jeremy Lin. They saw him kill in practice all the time, they saw him put up the triple double in D-League, but even they were going to cut him for some no-name D-leaguer they wanted to sign instead.
The entire system has catastrophic flaws, and right now the next great Asian American bballer after Jeremy Lin still faces the same prejudice and discrimination within the system from college offers to pro looks.
Kobe's right but its crazy that noone in the maintstream will ever seriously address the fundamental problem, even if it staring everyone in the face. I want one interview with Van Gundy or Hubie Brown to ask them exactly what they mean by a statements like "he's deceptively athletic" or "he's deceptively quick."
ReplyDeleteBecause the truth is, what that means is that even if you showed them an athletic Asian guy jumping around right in front of their face, their own bias would never be able to admit the existence of that basic reality. Its probably one of the most successful cases of mass brainwashing in human history. And its all related to the R word.
Well, that's why Jeff Van Gundy (killed his own coaching career by feuding with Vassilis Spanoulis who I thought could have been a poor man's John Starks) and Hubie Brown (tried to play Patrick Ewing at power forward and screamed his way out of coaching) are NOT NBA personnel people anymore.
DeleteWhen Vassilis Spanoulis quit the Rockets due to Van Gundy's disrespect, owner Les Alexander sent the entire Rockets team after Spanoulis (spearheaded by Yao) to get him back. It failed because the damage had been done. Les Alexander kicked out Van Gundy and graciously traded Spanoulis to the Spurs for Luis Scola. The Rockets are not perfect, but they try to atone for their errors. Notice how Daryl Morey has apologized publicly for missing Lin?
Hubie Brown, by his own admission, had his best coaching season in 1976 with the Kentucky Colonels (a team that would be a contender in today's NBA). After that it all went downhill. A Street and Smith's scouting report I read in the early 90s said about Brown "Hubie Brown would be a good coach if it wasn't for the fact that basketball is played by PEOPLE".
With all due respect to Jeremy, when people say "decptively quick or athletic," it isn't so much a race thing as it is a body type thing. I do agree, that non-Black players tend to be slapped with that tag for whatever reason. But people said the same thing about Andre Miller a decade ago. You can even say Deron Williams is deceptively quick. What they're trying to say is, Jeremy is quicker than he looks. Chen Jianghua, the athletic guard from the Chinese National team, is noticeably quick and athletic. Unfortunately, he doesn't understand how to play the game.
DeleteTotally true.
DeleteFormer Bobcats forward Walter Herrman was one of the most athletically gifted forwards in the NBA when he played in 2006-2007.
On youtube, Herrmann flies up and down the court with his skywalking finger rolls and open court speed. He was just as athletic as Jeremy Lin, but Herrmann was a white Argentinian forward. Herrmann also produced mightily on the NBA court.
The NBA is filled with "athletic" players that can't play. I say that either one can play or he can't.
With all due respect to TVN (a closet hater based on his comment history), how is it a body type thing? Jeremy Lin is 6'4 or 6'5 with shoes on, 6'3 without shoes. Most starting NBA point guards are 170 to 190 pounds, Jeremy Lin is 212 pounds (200 pounds 18 months ago at the draft combine). The "experts" saying Lin's recent plays are "deceptively athletic" is interesting when Jeremy Lin is both taller and stronger than almost all starting NBA point guards.
DeleteI give TVN and the experts a benefit of a basketball doubt.
DeleteJeremy Lin was a shooting guard in college. Compared to most NBA shooting guards, Lin had average size and comparable athleticism. That is not the case at PG where Lin is bigger and stronger than almost every guard in the NBA.
NBA scouts go to the far corners of the world to scout athletes. Yet they neglect the Ivy League which has demonstrated in recent years that it is more than capable of competing with the best D1 schools. There have always been good players at the Ivies, including Matt Maloney who was a terrific starting PG for the Rockets and Jerome Allen who was a 2nd round pick and was overrated in college.
I liken Ivy League vs D1 competion to the top Spanish League vs the NBA. There likely is NBA talent in the Ivy League aside from just Jeremy Lin.
My personal experience is that the higher you go, the easier it gets.
ReplyDeleteEven if Jeremy Lin had been waived by the Knicks, he would have been reclaimed off waivers. There are enough nonidiots in the NBA that recognize that Lin has game. Lin actually has received more NBA chances that college chances and is more highly celebrated as a pro than as an amateur.
Keep fighting a good fight my Asian brothas... We will prevail in the long run....
ReplyDeleteThe funny thing is, Jeremy Lin was offered a free-agent contract from the L.A. Lakers after the 2010 draft. Their offer was reportedly worth more than the offer from Golden State Warriors.
ReplyDeleteLin could possibly have played alongside Kobe Bryant, if he wanted to. Maybe they could better evaluate his talent. Instead, he chose to stay loyal to his hometown team, the Warriors who were run by an incompetent head coach.
The media seems to overplay the fact that Jeremy was overlooked by NBA scouting.
But in reality, he had several offers: Sign with Dallas, where the G.M. really wanted to develop his talent, go to L.A. where he might get more media exposure. Or stay loyal to his hometown, which was his eventual choice.
He had a choice between teams that saw his potential, and the team that wanted him for marketing purposes (Golden State).
But Dallas.was going to send Lin to the D league for the entire year with no NBA calluo, according to Mavs GM Donnie Nelson.
ReplyDeleteThe Lakers had Steve Blake ahead of Lin in the depth chart. Plus, Metta World Peace occasionally rotates into the backcourt for defense.
Joe Lacob had cleared Golden State's backup pg position. Lin was slated to be that guy before the season started. But then Keith Smart came in and didn't like the look of Lin. Acie Law was brought in because he's Smart's kind of player: INEFFECTIVE. Now both Smart and Law are gone. Golden State STILL needs a pg, but Mark Jackson is retired as a player.
If NY had waived Lin, he'd be back to GS or some other NBA team. He'd keep on crushing people in practice and would force coaches to give him minutes.
I firmly believe that Lin would've exploded like this on any NBA team that started him. I do not believe that NY is the only team Lin could be doing this foe.
Jeremy Lin really transformed himself during the NBA lockout:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.mercurynews.com/jeremy-lin/ci_20033514
Plus, like he said, and like Tommy Amakar said, it takes more than a simple look or basic tests to appreciate what he brings to the game (Lin's references to 5 on 5 game situations).
His value to the Knicks are not his shooting and dribble penetration (they are icing on the cake), it is his court vision and organizational skills and ability to deliver the ball to the right person, at the right spot, at the right time, so that person can shoot the ball in rhythm (Steve Novak!).
This comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteIn the popular fable of Jeremy Lin's life story, the villains are the NBA scouts and executives who overlooked the Harvard-educated, Asian-American point guard from Palo Alto.
DeleteSuch a storyline, while convenient, undercuts a key aspect of Lin's rocket ride to stardom. The New York Knicks sensation is thriving not because his skeptics were wrong. Lin is thriving because he realized they were right.
He really was too willowy to survive the muscled forest of an NBA defense. He really was lacking a consistent jump shot.
So Lin rewrote his scouting report, reinventing himself shot by shot and pound by pound.
"That's the lesson here: If you don't like the way things are going for you in a sport, don't cry about it. Don't whine to the coach. Do something about it," said Doc Scheppler, who helped Lin refine his shooting fundamentals.
Over the span of more than three body-transforming months, Lin doubled the amount of weight he could squat (from 110 pounds to 231 pounds), nearly tripled the number of pull-ups he could do (from 12 to 30) and abandoned the shooting form he'd been using since eighth grade (he's now among the most accurate point guards in the NBA).
He did so by crisscrossing the Bay Area all summer, honing his shooting touch with Scheppler in Los Altos Hills, building up his lower-leg strength with trainer Phil Wagner in Menlo Park and sculpting his upper body with E.J. Costello at 24 Hour Fitness in Pleasanton -- often
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on the same day.
"He's got the mental makeup of a Hall of Famer," Wagner said.
Coach Musselman's role:
Deletehttp://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/25/sports/basketball/the-evolution-of-jeremy-lin-as-a-point-guard.html?pagewanted=2&_r=2&ref=general&src=me
(link copied and pasted from another poster above in this thread)
INTANGIBLES!:
Delete“That’s the beauty of Jeremy Lin,” Scheppler said. “It’s not about moral victories. It’s ‘I have to win.’ ”
:)
"Intangibles" are invisible only to those who don't know the game.
DeleteThe last article is good. The Jeremy Lin of last season is not the Jeremy Lin of this season. While there were flashes of his ability, in a way it was good that he struggled / didn't play as much. It got him motivated to improve (which he did). Of course, due to the lockout, the improvement couldn't be shown to the Warriors (and Rockets indirectly).
ReplyDeleteThe Knicks were lucky to pick up him and he has done well. But Jeremy Lin does deserve credit for improving. We don't know how good he will be in the future but at least we know, he will definitely work at it.
Yes, Ron Artest said he felt like Lin played like a scared punk last season, Lin said he was trying to please everyone (now he said he is only focused on what his teammates and coaches think), and he seemed to get information overload trying to run an NBA offense last year (in retrospect, it looks like that was because of his innate court vision / field sense, but not having fundamental understanding of how an NBA offense runs, so he just saw lots of noise, and not organized patterns he can easily chunk like a grandmaster chess champion now). And that will only get better with practice and experience (http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/otl/news/story?id=5797316).
ReplyDeleteThe brain can process only so many data points at once -- think about the challenge of memorizing a 10-digit phone number -- so the next step is instantly recognizing which data to disregard.
Delete"Yes," says Damien Farrow, an Australian Institute of Sports scientist who is a world leader in court-vision research, "there is a lot of information that can be considered and processed in these situations. However, typically the elite guys like Rubio don't get bogged down with all that information. Through practice and experience, they know how to filter the information and attend to only the most critical."
That guy on the wing who's open for a 3 but can't shoot the 3? Dead data. Instead, Rubio dials into the opportunity that presents itself at the top of the key, if that forward can lose his man on the pick. And he has backup options, each of them rising and falling in order of priority each fraction of a second. It's all about "situational probability," a relentless calculus that establishes expectations of likely events as they unfold. Here, long-term memory, the ability to recall successful patterns, is critical.
So, too, is the ability to "chunk" the most relevant information into manageable units. It's a way of bundling data so that it can be processed efficiently. "In terms of chess and basketball, the exact same things likely happen," Vint says. "Chess masters 'chunk' entire patterns of pieces on the board rather than recall them as individual units." In basketball, these patterns merely play out, and are recognized, at hyper-drive speed.
Wow, Lin's current stats should really be:
ReplyDelete6 ft. 5 inches and 212 pounds
- he is 6 ft. 3 without sneakers and lots of NBA players use their height with sneakers on
- looks like he bulked up to 212 from 200 over summer:
He compared Lin to a stretched-out rubber band — flexible, but lacking that snap-back quality. The goal was to make him “stiffer,” through a training program of heavy weights and low repetition, in conjunction with a high-protein diet. With the added muscle, Lin pushed his weight to 212 pounds from 200, while increasing his vertical leap by 3.5 inches, Wagner said. The result is evident every time Lin barrels into the lane this season.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/25/sports/basketball/the-evolution-of-jeremy-lin-as-a-point-guard.html?pagewanted=3&_r=2&ref=general&src=me
You can see that Deron Williams is still much stockier than Lin, but for a NBA point guard, he is a big, strong dude.
There's a video where Lin is talking to school kids, saying he is 6'4 with shoes. He would be wearing high heels if he gained 2" of shoes haha.
ReplyDeleteHere's my take on the whole Jeremy Lin thing:
ReplyDeleteHe always had the ability to jump, drive and shoot as demonstrated in HS and college because he could play within his weight and natural abilities. He was quick enough and good enough to play against anyone.
The NBA however is a thugs' game, which means that one would have to be built stronger or be extremely wirey to survive. I think that was what most NBA people were worried about when they thought of Jeremy, since they also believed that Asian people and players are typically slight, play "small" ball and are prone to injuries. But that never stopped Spud Webb, Mugsee Bogues, Stockton, Nash etc etc. All started as fillers in the league and developed their game with every opportunity they had even if they had to fight and claw their way through.
I think everyone could be missing the point that Jeremy was also maturing physically. It's been 2 years and you would expect the young man to develop in many ways. We all knew he was going to work hard in practice and improve his game just like anybody else. Sure he had shooting habits that was different but it had worked for him before. The only difference is that in the NBA you will get hit by defensive specialist who can hide the fouls. You will need to change the way you shoot,spot up or set up your shots. Jeremy has made some changes but he's still the same player I recognize from his Harvard and Summer League days. Smart and all the other coaches, recruiters etc are simply making up all kinds of excuses on why they overlooked Lin.
The biggest excuse however was that Lin was not even a prospect to over 300 schools and colleges, so he was automatically not a prospect to any NBA team. That did all the damage it could do to Lin's chances of playing in the league. If it wasn't for his persistence and determination to hang on he wouldn't be here, we wouldn't have this site to talk about it. I think Lin knew that these colleges, NBA teams and so-called basketball experts wouldn't give him a chance. There is a group among these experts that don't want him to succeed at all. This probably explains the big chip on his shoulder, Lin is not fighting against players' perception, he's fighting against everyone. It's not about John Wall better contract or jealous players or whatever. It's about the faceless group of people that don't want him in the league, because they want to continue the public's perception that only black people can play basketball. The reason we see so many black athletes in this league is because they want the market for themselves, which is why they try so hard. Office politics also exist among players and management, they will give opportunities to their own people, their own friends.
Smart is a prime example. He never bought into Lacob's idea to run Lin at Golden State, even though Lin did everything to show his dedication to Golden State at the expense of the other teams who were interested. Lin also felt he had a better opportunity to grow with the young team and a new coach, he got a young team but 2 ball hogs as well and a coach who was already bought by these guys to help keep his job (it didn't work).
Lin got the opportunity of a lifetime when Dantoni gave him his start, but Dantoni only did it to save his job otherwise I doubt he would have done it if the Knicks were in a better position.
ReplyDeleteWhich makes Jeremy Lin, the man and the story, even more remarkable. Unfortunately his successes will only bring more challenges. Someone is going to cut him down, even injure him if that's what it takes to end linsanity.
As for the naysayers on this site (ie. Mr Negative), I don't think you know enough basketball to understand what it takes to be an NBA player, let alone the best player in a college team. You don't know what Lin had to go through to get to where he is today, if you were in his situation would you have succeeded? Sorry but no one here would have made it or even come close. If you can't even do half the job that Lin has done how can you even offer advice to a guy that's now getting all the help he can get to understand the NBA game, a niche that all of us have never and will ever get to experience.
Sorry for the long post!
Whitman you're wrong. The 'experts' are inclined to say Lin wasn't good and made himself dramatically better, to save their reputations. Jeremy has said a few different times that only the Mavs offered a summer league contract after going undrafted. The system was broken for a kid who was Cal's HS player of the year but received zero HS scholarships (passed by 300+ schools). It's really lazy for experts to say Lin got way better. People said the same excuses about why Tom Brady was overlooked. Jeremy Lin did work really hard getting stronger and improving hid shot, but his vision, skill set were there in high school, college, and while being cut by 2 teams.
ReplyDeleteThe excuses also don't make sense when you realize even the Knicks didn't know what they had and were about to CUT Lin.
Yeah I agree, the system (or something bigger than the system) is definitely broken -- which is not exactly a revelation to any asian male who grew up in the united states. Your point about the 300+ Division 1 schools that passed on Jeremy is further brought home by a listing of some of the worst ranking division 1 teams in the country this year: Binghamton, Kennesaw St., Northern Arizona, Radford, CSU Northridge, Towson, Chicago St., Bryant, San Jose St.. I think when people mention that Division 1 makes people think of the teams we see every year in March Madness (Duke, North Carolina, Ohio State, etc...).
DeleteThink about some of the 16th seeds in the National Tournament from years past. Then find the worst team in their league. That team passed on Jeremy Lin. What a joke.
Everybody knows that American colleges routinely reject superb Asian American male applicants in favor of any other applicant. It is no different in sports or anything else that colleges are involved in.
DeleteColleges are not free market entities whose survival depends on the whims of the free market. They are grant and alumni funded trusts that take on students only to make more money. So if a college basketball coach overlooks Jeremy Lin, his job won't suffer and so he has no incentive to change.
The NBA is a competitive free market entity in which teams are trying to kill each other. Everybody who passed on Lin, including the Knicks, is cowering in embarrassment AS THEY SHOULD BE.
At the college level, not one coach has expressed remorse for passing up on Lin. You hear racists like ex Stanford coach Trent Johnson making excuses for why a NCAA Player of thr Year candidate was rejected from his team. Instead, all those racist college coaches are smugly patting themselves on the back for being racist to Lin.
The NBA hasn't given Lin the greatest chance, but at least it gave him one. Not so at the NCAA. That is a root reason (among others) why I refuse to watch NCAA D1 basketball on TV.
You know, getting passed by all 300+ schools is an interesting point that has been noted over and over again. However, it never dawned on me until Anonymous / Sydney posted just how big a deal that was. But let's take a step back and only tackle certain schools (to be fair).
DeleteJeremy Lin sent tapes to the Patriot and Ivy league schools. Only Brown and Harvard showed interest so boo to all the other schools. Jeremy himself said he was interested in UCLA, Stanford and Cal which all didn't work out. I personally wouldn't discount most of the other schools not on this initial list. It seems that Jeremy was looking for good academic schools with athletic programs and not just basketball powerhouses. There may have been lower tier schools that could have used Jeremy but who knows if Jeremy would have attended just because a school offered a scholarship.
But I don't gave the other Bay Area colleges a pass. Among the Bay Area schools that are Division I, how many of them are "good"? University of San Francisco (USF) and Santa Clara have been mediocre in the WCC. San Jose State is not that good in the WAC. The only team that has been pretty good is St. Mary's. If Jeremy Lin has broken out while playing in the Bay Area, imagine all the attention he would have brought to the programs (then and now that he is in the NBA).
There are other smaller colleges in CA (UC Santa Barbara, UC Irvine, etc) that probably could have used Jeremy. But there's always complaints about how CA loses it's star basketball players to other schools. They had a chance to keep one and missed badly. Now that is pretty inexcusable.
DCL, more unnecessary excuse making. Any team can offer a scholarship to a player regardless of that player's interest. 300 schools passed in Lin. Lin was HS player of the year in a powerhouse state, took his HS to a 66-3 record his last 2 seasons. Won the championship when his team had no one over 6'4 and Mater Dei had 7 players at least 6'7 who all got D1 scholarships. Lin got no scholarships. Name me just 1 other HS player of the year who got no offers.
DeleteUgh, St. Mary's.
DeleteJeremy Lin with Omar Samhan (22 ppg, 11 rpg, 3 bpg) would have won the entire NCAA tournament possibly two years in a row.
Still, neither player would have been drafted for racial reasons.
Anonymous,
DeleteListen, I don't really care at this point that no schools offered him a scholarship. All of that stuff can be analyzed and written into a book where people can study it for years. We can't correct it now.
I live in the Bay Area and I'm just going to say that the Bay Area school's missed out. Hopefully the Bay Area schools (and other schools in areas with large Asian populations) will learn and not ignore the Asian basketball ballers that play in SF, Oakland, SJ, LA and other locations.
Let Jeremy Lin be a wake up call to schools to not ignore kids and see what they can do for you. Dwelling on the past does us no good. What all of us fans and Jeremy himself has done is show that Asian people can't be boxed into a stereotype.
Lin DID get offered a summer league position.
ReplyDeleteLin DID get signed by an NBA team.
Lin DID get real minutes.
Lin DID become an NBA star.
any of you guys here also post on SLAC? :)
ReplyDeleteHave you ever played a basketball game where you have preconceived ideas who can play and who can't? The players you thought can play are ball hogs who shoot 80% of the team's shots and miss more than they make, but nobody makes a big deal out of it because everybody bought into the idea that he can play therefore he's good. He passed the eye test. While another guy on the team you assume can't play but seems to score most of the time when and if he gets the ball but rarely getss enough touches. You just know he can do much better with more touches but the team just doesn't pass to him and always pass to the ball hogs. Well, this happens on the playground and reaches deep into college and to some extent the NBA. That is sad because it produces alot of ball hogs and the same type of players who don't play the game the right way solely relying on their athleticism to claim their "rights" to the NBA. It should be a privelege to be in the NBA and not a right. You have to earn it. Kudos to Jeremy for earning his and playing the game the right way in spite of the so called experts. These experts can also be lumped into the category of "ball hogs" because they bought into the same mentality, one of survival of the fittest. Whatever happened to the John Woodens of coaches? Those days are gone. I'm glad an Asian American player is the one to challenge conventional wisdom and hopely dismiss all the wrong theories of what a basketball player should be and all the prejudices that come with it.
ReplyDeleteThe basketball has a way of finding itself into the hands of the guys that can play.
DeleteIt is on the individual player to impose his will on the game. Jeremy Lin has always been able to do that. Not even bad coaching can stop great players like Lin.
At Portsmouth and Las Vegas, Lin played with high volume scorers who had the ball much more than he did. However, Lin's efficiency stood out. So did Lin, and that's why he made the NBA.
In Lin's short stints before the NJ game, he showed a high level of involvement and individual brilliance. Even in low minutes, Lin showed us all what he could do. His teammates know too, and that's why Lin is well accepted by any NBA team that has him.
Lin can only be overlooked by people who do not know the game.
You can't wake a person who is pretending to be asleep :)
DeleteMT,
DeleteI have to agree with you on this. If a White Player had done what Jeremy Lin had done, he would be the next "Great White Hope" or the next "Larry Bird". For Jeremy Lin, there is no comparison. But the good thing is that Jeremy Lin is showing a mix of knowledge, skills and athletic ability / talent. For too long, the NBA has become an athletic game. Guess what? Asian kids now don't have to feel they need to be a LeBron / Kobe (physical freak) to play in the NBA. They can acquire the knowledge, learn the skills to play basketball. They do need some athletic ability and talent but I am certain it is out there, it just has been overlooked.
If an undrafted black player who went to the Ivys came into the NBA and played at an MVP level in his first few starts, we'd be calling him "The Great Black Hope".
DeleteThat gem of a quote is better than anything I've written on this topic.
ReplyDeletesomeone posted this already, but in a long post so ill get to the point.
ReplyDeleteMoral of the story.....
It's Lin vs the world
Relevant to some topics discussed above, here is a link explaining what "confirmation bias" is - selectively remembering or using information to support a pre-conceived notion:
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias
As said on this forum before, from HS to college to the pros, Jeremy Lin has faced subjective, prejudiced opinions from scouts about his abilities, even those who saw him play in person or who analyzed his impressive stats and production numbers. The "experts" dismissed his great plays and over emphasized his bad plays to fit their prejudiced ideas of him as a player.
Jeremy Lin, a rare Asian American who doesn't shy away from his heritage (unlike so many others who aspire to assimilate at all costs, even downplaying discrimination):
"I think [my ethnicity] has something to do with it. I don't know how much. But I think just being Asian-American, obviously when you look at me, I'm going to have to prove myself more so again and again and again, and some people may not believe it."
"I know a lot of people say I'm deceptively athletic and deceptively quick, and I'm not sure what's 'deceptive.' But it could be the fact that I'm Asian-American. But I think that's fine. It's something that I embrace, and it gives me a chip on my shoulder."
lin at least acknowledges his asian heritage unlike other asian american sellouts who tries too hard to be "white." it's refreshing to see he doesn't hide from the fact he's asian. he has earn my respect him off the court more than ever now.
ReplyDeletegreat comment! I think it's ditto for everybody on this forum.
DeleteI think it's hilarious that announcers often say "deceptively quick", "deceptively athletic", "deceptively strong", but how come they never say "deceptively smart"?
ReplyDeleteBecause honestly, when I look at Lin, if I didn't know he went to Harvard, he doesn't look like a smart guy. David Lee was right that Lin is the dumbest smart guy he knows. I've seen articles and references that Lin uses trigonometry during basketball games as if he were mentally computing the sine of an angle. No he doesn't! It's just instincts and experience.
Anyways, it's my personal joke now whenever I hear an announcer comment on Lin's intelligence, I add, "you mean, deceptively smart".
“I’m not sure what’s deceptive,” Lin said. “But it could be the fact I’m Asian-American. But I think that’s fine. It’s something that I embrace, and it gives me a chip on my shoulder. But I’m very proud to be Asian-American, and I love it.”
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/25/sports/basketball/lins-new-challenge-media-onslaught-at-all-star-weekend.html?pagewanted=print
i want to cry when i read that.